Tillis is the prototype of an establishment candidate…Tillis, with his pragmatic streak and country-club credentials, represents just about everything tea partiers rose up to oppose.

Thus far, he has handled that delicate matter largely by keeping a low profile in the race, whenever possible avoiding forums where his conservative opponents might raise questions about his ideological fidelity…The plan is for him simply to run out the primary clock—while teammates like American Crossroads, which had begun singing his praises that week to the tune of $1 million in ads, hold off his rivals.

A rational course for North Carolina voters was suggested by the NC blog The Daily Harvester #ABT: THE rule for Tuesday By Brant Clifton May 4 2014

That’s it: A-B-T. Anybody But Tillis.

…You’ve got two choices. You can do what the Ruling Class tells you to…Or you can send a message to the powers-that-be that THINGS HAVE GOT TO CHANGE. Knocking some of these charlatans off of the public gravy train will get the whole crowd’s attention QUICK.

Do we need more people the crowd in DC is cheering for? Or do we need to break up their smorgasbord-on-our-dime…

In the US Senate race, Tillis fits the former category. All of the other seven in the GOP field appear to fit the latter category…

A vote for Thom Tillis is one more for business-as-usual, and sends a signal to Boehner and McConnell to stay on their current course. (Again, ABT.)

In a post today discussing the North Carolina Governor’s endorsement of Tillis, Clifton observes

In my lifetime, I can remember when the NCGOP was little more than a small coterie of country-clubbers in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Greensboro. GOP primaries were all about picking someone to be a sacrificial lamb in the November general election. Then, Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms came along and made it cool to vote — and register as — Republican. Both of those guys — Reagan in 1976 and 1980 and Helms every six years — got blasted as extreme and unelectable by liberals, the media, and GOP establishment types…They set the table for the GOP dominance we are seeing in Raleigh today. Unfortunately, it appears that the powers-that-be in the NCGOP have learned nothing from history. They are trying really hard to revert back to the form that kept the party a geographically-restricted afterthought and novelty.